Explore the Museum of the World

Travel through deep time with this interactive Earth

Explore key moments in Earth’s transformative history as continents drift and climate fluctuates over 4.6 billion years. The Smithsonian presents a series of interactive snapshots of the earth. From its toddler years during the Hadean period, when its surface was mostly molten, to the mostly unidentifiable landmasses of the future earth, 100 million years from now.

Explore the British Museum's Pompeii and Herculaneum collection

This video tour utilizes the British Museum’s collection—featuring frescoes, tools, cookware, jewelry, and even carbonized food—to reconstruct daily life in Pompeii and Herculaneum, offering an expert view of how people lived before the eruption transformed both cities.

Explore an interactive timeline and map of dinosaurs across the globe

This tool maps dinosaur habitats based on fossil sites around the world. It includes short articles and additional information—including size, diet, and weight—about each dinosaur. A timeline and data table also allow users to compare dinosaur emergence and extinction dates.

Hear the untold colonial backstories of the British Museum’s most famous artifacts

This podcast from VICE’s Unfiltered History Tour visits the British Museum’s prized objects through accounts from experts and communities from which they were taken.

Flip through centuries-old artifacts in this 3D library

Archaeology is hands-on work, giving researchers the ability to analyze artifacts from as many sides as possible to find marks left by those that came before us. While looking at pictures of artifacts gives you some insight, you're limited to...

The history of the world map

What did people used to think the world looked like? From the beginning of human history to right before the age of exploration, learn how the world maps were created.

Take a virtual journey through the world's deserts with Google Earth and BBC

Explore some of the world’s deserts in this “Natural Treasures” collaboration between Google Earth and BBC Earth. Visit the Namib Desert in Namibia where the simplest strategy to escape the heat is to emerge only in the cool of the night....

An immersive curation of the world's rock art

A living archive of humanity’s ancient art and symbols, our shared history that is embedded as rock art and cave art in the landscape

Twelve artworks you'll love zooming into

Zoom in on these famous paintings to see what's hiding up close, then go exploring the rest of Google's incredible Arts and Culture hub.

The history of the Met

From a single sarcophagus to a collection of more than a million artifacts that span nearly the entirety of human civilization, the Met and its importance have grown significantly over the last 150 years. This history of the museum hits all the highlights, including important acquisitions, new wings and galleries, and the importance of the buildings that hold and display all of the incredible artwork.

View an interactive collection of historical documents from the Viking project

This collection includes original mission bulletins, engineering and planning documents, and interview segments from more than 80 Viking team members who made the historic exploration of Mars’ surface by a lander possible.

A detailed interactive timeline of technology since 1500

Tech devices are heirs to a complex history of both technological invention and social history. What if you could visualize how radio, TVs, and other devices are connected to the past and each other? Trace the elaborate genealogies of your phone and computer with this interactive timeline showing tech inventions since 1500.

Explore a map of global native lands

This interactive map visualizes Indigenous territories across the world. Users can search by location, language, or tribe to explore the histories, cultures, and present-day communities connected to specific lands.

Integrating mixed reality has made art galleries and museums more interactive and accessible

The technology bridges the gap between history and modernity in such spaces by attracting new, younger audiences while preserving cultural heritage through risk-free immersion. Mixed reality experiences, such as visiting reconstructed historical scenes or seeing virtual twins of lost paintings, can be programmed with software features for visitors with disabilities.

Explore the major archaeological sites of Egypt's 3,000-year history

With this interactive map, you can see when and where every major monument was built, from the Great Pyramid in the Nile River delta to the Greek temple of Isis near contemporary Aswan.

Take a virtual tour inside Stonehenge

Prehistoric visitors approached Stonehenge along a processional route known as the Avenue, where the sunrise of the summer solstice aligns with the sarsen stones. This interactive 3D tour recreates that experience with explainer videos and detailed sidebars.

See a data visualization of the East India Company's trade

This tool visualizes the East India Company’s trade from 1760 to 1834, letting you track shipments of tea, textiles, metals, and more. Users can sort by commodity, origin, destination, and date to see London’s vast imperial supply network that shaped the British Empire.

Watch a guided video tour of the Museum of Malware Art

The site includes installations, sculptures, textiles, musical pieces, and galleries inspired by malicious software and related technologies, including the ILOVEYOU virus, encryption protocols from ransomware attacks, and the Industroyer malware framework used by Russia to cut power to Ukraine.

A researcher thinks she knows why people keep touching museum exhibits

A museologist who studied unauthorized touch at the British Museum concluded that people may feel it's difficult to learn about things "unless you handle them" and that people are trying to connect with the past, viscerally. Her work has included interviewing British Museum visitors who committed unauthorized touches and spending extensive periods observing people touching prohibited items across 2004 and 2005.

Tour the ancient world via beer

What did the people of yesterday make of beer, and how exactly did they make it? Explore the timeless beverage in this guide to ancient beers from around the world. Archaeological evidence suggests the rise of beer brewing may have coincided with humanity's shift from hunters to farmers. According to this article, beer was first enjoyed in ancient Mesopotamia, where paintings, poems, and myths glorified the porridge-like brew.

An interactive sound map of 8,000 locations around the world

Cities and Memory's global sound map covers 140 countries, featuring paired recordings: original field captures of a moment in time and an artist's recomposition built from the same source. The structure treats every location as both document and raw material, giving 2,500 contributors the same prompt with unpredictable results.

A timeline of Google's growth

As of 2025, Google will approach its third decade of existence. A period that's seen the company go from dominating the search market to the launch of one billion-user product after another, from Gmail to YouTube. This detailed timeline lays out what happened when, laying out Google's history in detail. It marks key milestones, like the introduction of Google Maps, and what year they happened.

A global interactive guide to the first world war

Using rarely seen films, new reports of the day, and interactive maps, 10 historians provide a summarized history of the Great War, World War I. During the course of this half hour film, get a variety of insights and perspectives on the so-called "war to end war" and its long-reaching effects.

Where were the Middle Ages?

Many have equated the Middle Ages to European culture and an era beyond the reach of science and art. This false equivalency minimizes, if not erases, the culture and scholarship that flourished worldwide during this time. Medieval history exists in and across many countries, including China, India, Iran, Sudan, and Ethiopia. In this article, a classical archaeologist details evidence of medieval life around the world.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Explore a comprehensive encyclopedia of all known bird species and families

The "Birds of the World" collaborative ornithological platform combines millions of bird observation records with extensive information on more than 11,000 bird species, including their appearance, sounds, taxonomy, habitat, movements and migration, diet, breeding, behavior, and evolutionary histories.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

See how each of the more than two million known species relates to each other—and to common ancestors—in this zoomable tree of life.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

See these 16 pieces of art evoking phobias of snakes, flying, spiders, and more. 

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by more than 1.5 million Muslims each year.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

This real-time tracking of the hantavirus cruise ship outbreak in May 2026 offers a unique glimpse into the global reach of the outbreak and whether the virus sickened passengers and their communities around the world.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.